Oliver Martinez, who is famous for his relationship with pop
singer Kylie Minogue, sued two blogs and one news site over links
to other people's stories about him and his relationship with
Minogue.
The case was principally against Fuzz.fr, a website which
displays links to news stories on other sites ranked by popularity.
One of those links was to a story about Martinez and Minogue and
formed the basis of the case, which claimed that the article
violated his right to privacy.
The Paris Tribunal said that Fuzz.fr operator Eric Dupin's
publishing of the link made him responsible for the information
linked to.
"By sending the reader to the website
celebrite-stars.blogspot.com the defender had effectively made an
editorial decision," the court ruling said. The ruling was in
French and all quotations are from a rough translation done by
OUT-LAW.COM.
"The link in effect is a deliberate decision on the part of the
defending organisation, contributing to the spread of illicit
information, thus making him responsible as an editor of such
information," it said.
Dupin was fined €1,000 and ordered to pay a further €1,500 in
costs. The court said that the use of the hyperlink was "akin to
Eric Duphin writing such a blog himself. The responsibility of the
defendant results from him being at the root of the diffusion of
such information and therefore being held to have breached article
9 of the French Civil Code," said the ruling.
Article 9 of the French Civil Code provides that everyone has
the right to respect for his or her private life.
The judge fined two bloggers who also posted links to the story,
the writers behind CroixRousse.net and Vivre-en-normandie.com. They
were each fined €500 for linking to the item.
"It's a black day for French participatory websites, because it
opens the door to all kinds of [court] procedures," Dupin told news
agency AFP. He said that he would appeal the ruling to a higher
court, but that he had had to stop publishing his site because he
could not vet every link published.
The theoretical possibility has been there of being sued over
the content of a story to which a publisher has only provided a
link, but a lawsuit on that basis is extremely rare. The issue
remains largely untested in the UK. But according to Struan
Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons and editor of
OUT-LAW.COM, a link to controversial subject matter could land a
site operator in trouble.
"Linking to copyright-infringing material could be a criminal
offence under laws that deal with 'distributing' infringing copies
while linking to material that incites terrorism could be dealt
with under anti-terrorism legislation," he said. "Linking to
defamatory or otherwise unlawful material could also get you
sued."
Robertson pointed to a court ruling of 1894, the case of Hird v.
Wood in which the defendant was sitting beside a placard containing
defamatory remarks and drew the attention of passers by to it.
"There was no direct evidence of who provided the placard but the
defendant's action of pointing at it led to a finding of
liability," he said.
That ruling might still be used to stop a website in the UK that
links to defamatory content, Robertson suggested.
"This sort of battle is usually resolved long before legal
precedents need to be cited because most website operators will
quickly remove a link in the face of a complaint rather than suffer
the hassle and expense of fighting to keep it active," he said.
Editor's note: Thanks to EDRI for bringing this case
to our attention.
